Do you ever wonder why the Temple Endowment ceremony, one of the most important ritual ordinances of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, begins with the story of Creation? Why is that? In the same vein, why is it that in the Restoration, Joseph Smith revealed at least three extrabiblical accounts of the Creation narrative? The aptly named Pearl of Great Price contains two and the entire Temple liturgy is another. What is it that God is trying to teach us about the importance of the relationship between created Humanity and the Earth?
We Mormons are not unique in having a creation narrative central to our cosmology. Almost every major and minor spiritual tradition on this planet revolves around cosmic-earthy origin narratives. Perhaps this is because God knew we would continually need to be reminded, to be pointed back here. To the dirt beneath our feet. Back to our earthy context.
The very name of Adam is a wordplay with the Hebrew word for dirt, Adamah. As a token, Adam’s name serves as an outward sign that manifests the God-given importance of the human-Earth relationship. When we go through the Temple endowment ceremony, we stand in the place of Adam and Eve, to be reintroduced, by God, to this beautiful Earth as if for the first time. Before any laws or commandments or ritual, we are shown our place, our context—our home.
The stage on which our spiritual lives unfurl—in which we celebrate, cry, laugh, raise families, encounter God, and have joy—is Earth.
Bristlecone Firesides
We created this blog because it is evident that we are out of context. We act as though we no longer belong to the Earth. The whole of the modern world almost seems perfectly crafted to isolate us from each other and the natural world. From our phones to our cars to our diets to the increasing pace of daily life, everything seems to be cutting us off from our context.
Suffering and disharmony are the fruits of falling out of context. And there is almost nothing so evident as the disharmony between humans and Earth. Climate change, species extinction, plastic oceans, pollution, desertification, deforestation, and the list goes on. The United States ranks as the third most depressed country on Earth and Utah, the state in which I live ranks in the top 10 in the United States. Both humans and the Earth are suffering because this essential relationship has been forgotten and decontextualized.
Bristlecone Firesides is an attempt to begin healing this broken human-Earth relationship at its spiritual roots. We don’t have any delusions of grandeur or messiah complexes like we’re going to change the world. But the best place to make real change is to start in your own backyard, or, as Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf says to “lift where you stand”. And we, here at Bristlecone Firesides, all stand as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Mormonland is our backyard.
Our goal is to reground the Mormon conversation in the stuff of the Earth—to recontextualize it. We will do this by exploring our responsibility of stewardship, examining the Earth through the lens of Mormon spirituality, and examining Mormon spirituality through the lens of the Earth. All in an attempt to heal the rift that has grown between each of us and the Earth, thereby spurring members to enact ecologically restorative action in their own communities. In short, Bristlecone Firesides is a work of belonging to the Earth.
We will have weekly posts from our team of writers and plenty of guests posts from scientists, activists, professors, historians, stay at home moms, and regular joes. As well, we hope to feature art, poetry, photography, or anything that smells like pine and dirt on a summer breeze. Thank you for joining us and welcome to the Bristlecone Firesides community.
